The events of the afternoon, indeed, did not promise favorably for my forecast. About three o'clock, whilst Father Letheby was absent, a side-car drove into the village, from which two men alighted; and having made inquiries, proceeded to Father Letheby's house, and told the bewildered and frightened Lizzie that they had come to take possession. Lizzie, like a good Irish girl, stormed and raged, and went for the police, and threatened the vengeance of the Superior Courts, at which they laughed and proceeded to settle themselves comfortably in the kitchen. Great fear fell, then, upon the village, and great wrath smouldered in many breasts; and, as surely as if they had lighted beacon-fires, or sent mounted couriers far and wide, the evil news was flashed into the remotest mountain nooks and down to the hermitages of the fishermen. And there was wrath, feeble and impotent, for here was the law, and behind the law was the omnipotence of England.
What Father Letheby endured that evening can only be conjectured; but I sent word to Lizzie that he was to come up to my house absolutely and remain there until the hateful visitors had departed. This was sooner than we anticipated. Meanwhile, a few rather touching and characteristic scenes occurred. When the exact nature of Father Letheby's trouble became known, the popular indignation against the rebellious factory girls became so accentuated that they had to fly from the parish, and they finally made their way, as they had promised, to America. Their chief opponents now were the very persons that had hooted their substitutes through the village, and helped to close the factory finally. And two days after the bailiffs had appeared, an old woman, who had been bed-ridden for years with rheumatism, managed to come down into the village, having got a "lift" from a neighbor, and she crept from the cart to my door. Father Letheby was absent; he hid himself in the mountains or in the sea-caves these dread days, never appearing in the village but to celebrate his morning Mass, snatch a hasty breakfast, and return late at night, when the shadows had fallen. Well, Ellen Cassidy made her way with some difficulty into my little parlor, where, after I had recovered from my fright at the apparition, I ventured to address her:—
"Why, Nell, you don't mean to say that this is yourself?"
"Faith it is, your reverence, my own poor ould bones. I just kem down from my cabin at Maelrone."
"Well, Nell, wonders will never cease. I thought you would never leave that cabin until you left it feet foremost."
"Wisha, thin, your reverence, naither did I; but God give me the strinth to come down on this sorrowful journey."
"And what is it all about, Nell? Sure, you ought to be glad that the Lord gave you the use of your limbs again."
"Wisha, thin, your reverence, sure, 't is I'm wishing that I was in my sroud[8] in the cowld clay, before I saw this sorrowful day. Me poor gintleman! me poor gintleman! To think of all his throuble, and no wan to help him!"
"You mean Father Letheby's trouble, Nell?"
"Indeed, 'n' I do,—what else? Oh! wirra, wirra! to hear that me poor gintleman was gone to the cowld gaol, where he is lying on the stone flure, and nothing but the black bread and the sour wather."